You’ve by now seen the video[1]. People across the nation have seen it, as it went viral over the weekend.

(Which means, to put it mildly: The case is subjecting Denver’s police to national ridicule.)

Your Spotted This Morning correspondent talked with Perea about his decision to slap the wrists of the officers involved, instead of the dismissals Denver’s Independent Monitor, Richard Rosenthal[2], suggested.

Perea said the video evidence is only part of the case file.

So true.

What other evidence did Perea consider?

As you can see in our editorial today – titled “Wrong call in police beating[3]” – the barely-in-office safety manager says that, while interviewing the officers, he got a good look at their “body language.”

OK. But what about the video tape? It shows Officer Devin Sparks[4] throw a man who is simply talking on a cell phone face-first onto the pavement and then repeatedly beating the man – even though the poor guy is curled into a ball and drifting into unconsciousness.

(Perea also said that if the suspect, Michael DeHerrera[5] – a skinny musician – had done as Sparks instructed and put his hands behind his back, the beating would have stopped. I found it impossible not to note that, if I were in such a situation, I’d keep my hands over my head until the blows stopped, in order to protect myself. (That’s, you know, like a human instinct, hardwired into the brainpan in such a way as to make it impossible to do otherwise.) Yes, Perea said, but Sparks wasn’t hitting DeHerrea in the head – only in the legs.)

Perea does concede that the video evidence looks bad.

But it needs to be taken into account, Perea claimed, that at the time it was all going down, Sparks – an armed professional police officer trained in the art of dealing with bad actors – “perceived” that the drunken nightclub roustabout talking to his daddy on the cell phone was actually preparing to curl up his fist and smack Sparks.

Perea is standing by his decision.

Mayor John Hickenlooper, meanwhile, who hired Perea, must be smacking himself in the head. What candidate for governor wants this kind of thing erupting on the campaign trail?

Hickenlooper has angered KHOW talk-show radio hosts Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman for refusing to go on their show. (The idea is that the mayor doesn’t wish to discuss the reason police didn’t warn white and Latino men that black gang members were singling out white and Latino men for beat-downs.)

The RTD[12] light-and-commuter rail[13] lines planned for the northern communities are desperately seeking federal money, so a new study that doubles the ridership estimates for those lines ought to come in handy, as The Post’s Jeffrey Leib reports[14].